In November, 2013, I was contacted by Walker Glass Company to photograph the Singh Center for Nanotechnology in Philadelphia, PA. This was to highlight the glass elements found throughout the building. After a month of reaching out to security I was finally given a date of December 13th. as a shoot day. I had never seen the building prior to then.

Arriving on site after a two hour drive from New Jersey, we began to photograph around 11 am. The day was crystalline, the sky was asure blue, it was cold around 32 degrees, there was some some snow on the ground and the shadows of December were long and the sun was low. The client was looking for about 5 or six views to compliment an ad. Just walking up to the building presented 3 times that amount in my vision. Clearing security again I got situated and began with my assistant, Micha Hamilton to capture this building.

The day was spent working interiors and exteriors as the suns light-played on and through the glass walls. It was a shooters paradise as images presented themselves with the changing light providing linear views, refractions, shadows and intersecting lines of light and dark.

The daylight photography concluded around 4 pm as the final light dipped behind the building across the street. Then began the 2 hour wait for the dusk views. The temperature had now dipped to about 20 degrees as we waited for that magic moment. That time at dusk when the light in the sky is just enough to still reveal the exterior facade but not enough to make the interior lighting blown out. The magic moment in December lasts about 20 minutes at most. The image at the top of the screen was captured at that moment. There was a car was parked directly in front of the building. This was removed in post processing.

The post-processing then began with another 8 hours of sorting a collating all my raw views, making reference images and then outputting the clients reference images. In the end I captured over 600 RAW files. Those narrowed down to 25 reference images and the final delivery was about 6 views. Just what the client wanted.

The details. Camera: Canon 5D Mark II. Lens: Canon 17 to 40mm. Images were captured in RAW format, pre-processed in Adobe Bridge, saved as 16 bit TIFF files then retouched and final processing in Adobe Photoshop. No HDR (High Dynamic Range) was used. All images were individually toned and adjusted.

Thank you for reading. Jay Rosenblatt Client: Walker Glas